Purchased news costs integrity

I am a reader with only a
single year of experience with your publication. I have learned to
enjoy the doom, irritation, pique and hope that your publication
brings to my home on a periodic basis. Being a born-and-bred
Lexingtonian ("Home of the Revolution," don't you know ...), my
move West opened my eyes to a new revolution our country is
undergoing. With that small year's worth of experience reading your
paper, I purchased a gift subscription for my mother (who lives in
Boston) so that she, too, could appreciate the immense changes this
region and our country is undergoing.

Why is it
that I chose High Country News rather than my
local paper to keep her informed of these changes? Because the news
that traditional newspapers with their ties to commercial
advertising deliver has been clearly corrupted by their dependence
on commercial advertising. These papers are good for reporting on
sporting exploits and the latest recipes, but they are
fundamentally compromised by their ties to commercial advertising
when it comes to natural resource reporting. Commercial radio and
television suffer from the same compromised ethics. Avoiding this
"purchased news" (my term) is why both my mother and I receive
High Country News.

Imagine my
surprise to read that High Country News (via
Writers on the Range) distributed a piece by Frank Carroll of the
Potlatch Corporation. Potlatch Corporation is a self-described
"diversified forest products company" with $444 million in sales in
the first quarter of 2001. Their ability to influence press
coverage is the reason I subscribe to High Country
News and not my local newspaper. You would have been hard
pressed to find a less "connected" partisan for this or any
viewpoint.

This was exactly the purchased news
that I had hoped to avoid. If your desire was to produce a balanced
viewpoint, were you looking for that balance to occur at the cost
of your integrity? Rich and powerful corporations are able to
purchase all the news coverage they want; why are you building
their pulpit?